AUTHOR Paul Henke swept into Newport to sign copies of the third volume of his story about a Welsh family who escapes the oppression of the coalfields for a new life in the US.

Basing himself in Ottaker's bookshop in Commercial Street, Mr Henke enjoyed brisk business signing copies of Silent Tears, which has followed on the heels of Million Tears and Tears of War and Peace.

He said: "I keep in touch with my readers through my website and email address.

"A lot of Gwent people are reading my books and I've received some very complimentary messages from them."

His Welsh trilogy begins in 1890 and the latest volume takes the story up to 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War.

Mr Henke is currently working on a fourth volume covering the wartime years.

In addition, this prolific author, who has only been writing full-time for the last four years, has produced three thrillers by the titles of Debacle, Mayhem and Chaos.

Common to all three is a character called Nick Hunter, a Royal Naval officer and underwater bomb disposal expert.

Coincidentally that is exactly how Mr Henke, who was born at Efailisaf near Pontypridd, made a living between 1968 and 1978.

But according to the author that's where the resemblance ends. "He's taller, tougher, better looking and more talented than me and can trap the women a lot easier."

Nevertheless, Mr Henke's own experiences are worthy of a novel as he appears to have crammed two or three lives into one.

He grew up around Pontypridd, the son of Polish-born miner who was given the choice at the end of the war of staying in the allied army, becoming a miner or returning to what had just become communist-controlled Poland.

Not surprisingly he opted for the coalmining, married a Welsh girl and was absorbed into the south-east Wales coalfield community.

"My father was a talented linguist. He spoke five languages fluently and he soon sounded like a man from the Valleys."

Henke junior was a voracious reader and with books like the Hornblower series and the life of Admiral Nelson, he started to yearn for a career on the quarterdeck. At 18, and at the height of the Cold War, this miner's son from South Wales, who possessed a host of family relatives in communist Poland, was accepted by the officer-training naval college at Dartmouth.

He chose its toughest specialism - underwater bomb disposal and mine clearing.

"It was regarded as the toughest course and I think the challenge appealed to me."

A ten-year, full-time Royal Navy career earned him the rank of Lieuten-ant Commander and he carried this with him for another 12 years as a Naval Reservist.

"I was called up for service in the Falklands War but the day after my travel documents arrived the war ended."

During this period Mr Henke was making a living by running commercial diving operations in the oil industry.

He said: "I wrote the manuscript for Million Tears while sitting on an oil rig off the coast of Nigeria. The trigger for it was the Aberfan disaster, my father was one of the contingent of men trying to dig people out.

"It was a huge tragedy, of course, and it got me thinking about the terrible struggle the South Wales mining community has experienced to achieve decent lives and working conditions.

"But I was writing more for the love of it than with serious intent to become a professional author.

"I put the manuscript away in a box and only dusted it off 18 years later. Friends read it and urged me to try to get a publishing deal."

Amazingly, prior to committing himself to becoming a full-time writer, Mr Henke managed to fit in a third career in the financial services industry. "I started with Allied Dunbar, set up my own brokerage and then joined Rothschilds.

It went very well and gave me the financial stability to contemplate becoming a full-time author."

Mr Henke met his Scottish wife Dorothy in an Edinburgh nightclub and has been based in Scotland since 1975.

He believes he is just reaching the breakthrough point for making a living as a writer.

"People talk about overnight successes, but usually the individual concerned has been grafting away for years.

"For example, it took Ian Rankin 15 years and ten books to make a living. "I'm approaching that point in four, so I can't complain."

* To find out more go to the author's website at www.henke.co.uk or email at henke@sol.co.uk